When She Stops Saying She Loves You

“Monica Anne Preston!”
Mike didn’t go with Travis and James to wherever the hell they had planned but instead he came home an hour later. I heard the truck pull into the driveway along with the slam of a single door and the violent entry he made into the house.

I had locked my door after I came home and he slammed his hand on it.
“What the hell was that for!”

Go Tell It on the Mountain

The Boxer

Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream

I walked out the front door of Mike’s house at O’dark thirty wearing a pair of shoes that were two sizes too big along with three pairs of socks to try and ensure they would fit. Sure, I could have worn my Birkenstocks but if I was expected to do any actual running then I’d have an issue.
I walked half a block before I stopped in the middle of the road, looked back to the house, and then once again looked ahead.

IV. Suffer

“Tyler, what are you doing?” I asked as he hugged me.
“I just need to hold onto someone.”
“Okay, man, sure, but I can’t breathe, so ease up a bit."

Earlier in the summer our church youth group piled into two minivans and took a trip across the state line to "Wild Waters" in Coeur d' Alene, Idaho. It was a water park with four twisty slides, one "deep drop" and a lazy river. It was situated on a fake hilltop near the interstate, in a place one could see from afar and scream at their parents that they MUST GO THERE NOW.

I met Sam on a Sunday morning before my sophomore year. We went to the same church and she was a friend of the other girls in the class, since they all went to the same school. She didn’t talk very much and I retrained from my usual barrage of a unique knowledge of humanities (read: useless facts) about how Jonah never really cared about anything except for what he knew, I stayed quiet. Not cool, not reserved, not “ooh, check out the mysterious guy in the corner”—because no matter what I’d say or do, the other girls in the room had known me for almost two years prior.

I had several dreams during the night.
Not all of them were nightmares, but they came close as they all revolved around real people in my life. I couldn't recall anything that they said, but it was more of their expressions—the lifeless, dead expressions they had with every face that flashed in my head. My parents, teachers, Karen Anne, Dick, maybe even Elvis, I don’t know…but they all stood along a line that lead to a door and ultimately closed it on me.

The crisis had occurred.
The young girl sat alone and pondered everything.
Had he played with her heart? Kicked it down the way and left it broken?
Had she placed him onto a pedestal left only for God, and forsaken any divine tribute?
He had not spoken to her for a few days…always finding a reason not to talk, always in the company of the vicious lion, the one she thought he had broken away from, to find his own pride. While the young man did not say anything mean, the constant ignoring was cruel in of itself.

The young girl, at last, had broken through the demonic shell that held the young man’s heart. With that, she composed a song for him to always remember her by. She wrote it on the finest parchment she could find, dazzling it with multi-colored inks and unicorns that one only does when they feel they are in love:
And now I see,
What must come to be,
O’ the thoughts I have of you and me.
I long to see your face and without you here it’s a lonely place.
And what I want to say
Will go for my days.
And I want it to be for all time,

The young girl sat alone during the lunch hour. She didn't sit with the other students in the lunchroom. No, she walled herself in the safety of a classroom. While others were out on the field talking and running (one would not dare call it "recess" in junior high) she stayed behind to read a book.
"What are you doing in here, cow?"
She refused to look up from her reading--not wanting to give her tormentor the satisfaction.
"Are you too afraid to be with the others? Or are you afraid you’ll squash them flat?"
"I don’t weigh that much."